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Edited on Sun Apr-19-09 12:20 PM by patrice
First I argued that religion was made out of utility as opposed to any inherent truth found in any religious doctrine. Utility is functionality derived from reality. Reality is that which is inherently true.
Secondly, based on this, I asserted that absent the existence of a higher power (let’s say “God”) what incentive do humans have to be bound by “morals” (sic)
This is not an assertion; it is a rhetorical question. Since utility is a rational process, you are assuming that it is rationality/reason that states anything to the effect of "a higher power does not exist" and, thus, the necessity of religion. Reason states nothing of the sort; at best it says something to the effect of "Absent empirical evidence, I know of no reason to think that a higher power exists."
Morals are considered to transcend human reason, meaning that they are universal, the truths of morals are supposedly independent of human reason. In other words, humans can discover moral truths, but they do not themselves create them.
Some of the greatest cognitive Psychologists propose that moral reasoning is a product of the same processes that enable us to infer mathematical principles from experience and that said inferential processes are fundamentally organic, and, thus BTW, heritable. Yes a person may infer incorrectly or they may lie in one manner or another about their own moral inferences or those of others and the systems which produce the empirical elements of any given inference may or may not provide empirical "intervention", but the process, at least initially, is a rational one.
Therefore, empirical reality is an essence - ial factor in "moral truths", so, to the degree that one does/did not DIRECTLY and IMMEDIATELY make reality whatever it is, we "do not (ourselves) create" morals, but, to the degree that one's reason did contribute to a situation and, thus, help to shape reality, we DO INDEED create reality and, hence, the moral principles that are inferred from it, so morals are NOT delivered from on high, we create them and then they either serve the utility/function for which they were created or they don't and in that collective functionality we either live on to infer some more principles or we die.
For example, killing is considered to be against the moral code of humanity. A person can believe that killing is ok,
... because their inferential engines are churning out erroneous principles, as I mentioned was possible earlier.
but regardless of what they personally believe killing is against the moral code of humanity.
... because, unless it is a response to a direct and un-mediated attempt to kill you-or-yours, it is a violation of the basic empirical functionality of morals that are derived from reality, i.e. killing causes killing, ergo, it does not serve the principle of "survival of the fittest"; it is, in fact, counter to it, and, thus, a regressive trait in the rational processes that derive principles, such as The Golden Rule, from experience.
What I was arguing in an earlier thread was the point that absent of a higher power, how can it be logical that people subscribe to a moral code that supposedly transcends human thought if it was human thought that created it in the first place.
I see that we agree about this. Perhaps part of the problem here is the word "transcend", which, as I understand it, does not mean "alien", but rather "all inclusive", which, BTW, leads us to infer the possibility of some emergent property of the whole system that is greater than the sum of its parts. Have you read Cormack McCarthy's The Road?
In other words, without God or another higher power setting the rules for us to discover, who’s to say that anybodies morals are any better or worse than anybody else’s.
Ah, here's where we differ. Just because one inference has more or less the same probability of being valid as any other, does not mean that there are no principles which do in fact have a higher probablility of higher functionality, with the lowest degree of dysfunction, for the most people.
You're making the same mistakes many of my highschool students used to make: Depending upon your rational perspective, any answer can be seen as correct, ergo, all answers are correct, i.e. valid representations of reality.
And that's not the case, because you've oversimplified "correct".
If you're saying empirically rational thought created morals, then Relative to shared principles derived from previously identified and shared "real" empirical truths, the probable validity and reliability of some answers are high enough that we can accept them as "facts". However . . . yes, teapots may indeed fly as long as our backs are turned, but you need to establish further empirical grounds for that probability, before we can discuss it, or you can simply make it a belief, which you are perfectly free to do, and which may or may not be true, but about which reason has nothing to say one way or the other.
It just may happen that my morals happen to place a constraint on the happiness of others, but absent of a higher power acting as arbitrator, who’s to say my actions are immoral? Without higher power my morality would be judged by other humans only, and the opinions of other humans has never been proof positive that something is right or wrong.
You've accepted a simplified definition of "higher power" that I do not share with you. If we have no reason to think there is a "God", does that mean that there is also no such thing as one or more "higher powers"? Can we not agree that functionality, i.e. that which serves survival, is a pretty good "arbitrator"? "...who's to say...", can we not, ourselves, say to one another something such as "Given a, b, and c . . . r, s, and t are highly probably, ergo, we should u, v, and w, so that x, y, and z can become more possible? Don't we, in fact, do this all of the time?
Ask yourself who has a functional interest in us NOT engaging in our own empirical definitions of what is good/functional and what isn't. Yes, there are higher powers, not all of whom are derived from inferential processes that are valid to you/me. That doesn't mean that there can't be higher powers that do, that is unless one's own functions are served more by asserting that teapots fly, than they are by survival. In which case, I think what has recently transpired on Wall Street demonstrates that it is highly probable that a teapot which refuses to fly will make the difference between life and death for one or more persons.
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